let me end with what washington could do and rob command me to talk about what washington can do. what should washington do? what can it do? there are lots of ideas in washington over the course of the last 10 or 15 years about that would do about egypt in general. now, cut aid, give more aid, give the 23-16, not the tanks built in f-16, one tv 16, enough. i'm deeply ambivalent about all these ideas. it's clear we have important strategic interests and u.s. military and egyptian military seem to share those strategic interests for now. but who is to say going forward that, as we shipped our strategic posture, that egypt will remain as strategically important, excepting, of course, the suez can channel. we seem to be stuck in this -- we continue to give aid in the hope we are buying something from the egyptians and nobody is quite sure what exactly we are buying. even so, i don't think there's much that the united states can do. i think cutting aid isn't going to make a difference. night last weekend -- not this past one -- two weekends ago, wrote something about egyptians writing